


Twice Chosen

by Marcus_S_Lazarus



Category: Power Rangers (2017), The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, F/M, Power Rangers in Panem
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:14:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 20,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26846476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marcus_S_Lazarus/pseuds/Marcus_S_Lazarus
Summary: Two unusual discoveries at different ends to Panem lead to Katniss and other Tributes facing a new destiny. After they discover a set of five unique coins, Katniss must lead this strange, mismatched team in a new struggle that goes beyond the future of Panem... assuming that the former Tributes don't just kill each other first.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	1. Evil Rises

**Author's Note:**

> 1: Timeline-wise, this is set in the continuity of the 2017 _Power Rangers_ film, but only in the sense that it will feature the Zordon, Rita and Alpha of that version of the franchise; the Rangers of the film won't be appearing here, so just assume that nobody found Rita's body back in the present and she and the Coins remained undiscovered for another couple of centuries. For Panem, this starts early in the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games and diverges from canon from then.
> 
> 2: To get this point out of the way straight off, the fact that Elizabeth Banks had a role in both _Power Rangers_ and _Hunger Games_ is going to be nothing more than a detail; nobody will be comparing Rita to Effie at any point (whether because they genuinely look different or just because nobody will ever realise they look so similar, given Effie's various wigs and make-up versus Rita's more twisted appearance, is up to you)

When they first found the body lying among their fishing nets, the fishing boat had no reason to believe that they had made anything more than a disturbing but basically familiar discovery.

District Four might be one of the more pleasant Districts in Panem, but the right people weren't blind to the fact that the core problems of Panem remained here just as much as they could be found anywhere else. People could protest against the system and be arrested by Peacekeepers, they could run away and never be found, or they could kill themselves and their bodies only discovered some time later; so long as everyone else didn't follow their example, the Peacekeepers and the higher-ups didn't mind.

Drowning was an obvious option, considering District Four's close proximity to the ocean, but when this body was discovered in the nets it defied most of the obvious clues the boat crew had come to expect when making such a find. The skin was weathered and stretched so tightly against the figure's skeleton that it looked as though everything inside the body had long ago withered down into nothing, but there was no sign that the skin itself had been damaged in any way. The body as a whole appeared intact and a cursory inspection gave no indication that there were any bones broken, and there was no sign of weights or anything that might explain how this figure might have drowned itself. Something around the chest gave the impression that the figure had been female in life, but the legs were pressed so tightly to the chest that it was hard to be certain even of that, and there also seemed to be something in the figure's hand.

In any case, the body had been left in one of the ship's freezer bays as soon as it had been identified, in the hope that keeping it cool would make it easier for the relevant authorities to identify it later. Even with mandatory viewing now in session for most districts, key workers such as the crew were still expected to stick with their arranged schedules even after such a discovery, but the crew called ahead to alert the local Peacekeepers as soon as they were back on course for the shore.

Once they had landed, most of the crew left the ship to take the day's catch to the food processing plants, leaving the boat captain to show the assigned Peacekeeper to the body before he headed off for home himself. In situations like this, there was an unspoken understanding that Peacekeepers would deal with the bodies of these apparent suicides and everyone else would just act like they had never discovered the body.

The Peacekeeper didn't consider the issue particularly important when he first got on board the boat; based on what he'd heard in the crew's original report, he was expecting to find nothing more than another District resident having committed a particularly unconventional form of suicide at the worst. His initial thought upon examining the body was that it was in better shape than he had expected, but he soon became more suspicious when he realised that the body didn't entirely match what he'd been told. It was certainly withered, but the Peacekeeper was certain that he'd been told about an almost skeletal body, and this figure actually seemed to have a little muscle on it, even if clearly wasn't in the best shape…

Noticing a vague green glow tracing along the body's veins, the Peacekeeper turned his attention to tracing the source of the glow. It didn't take long for him to realise that the glow could be traced to a strange green gem surrounded by gold, clasped in the palm of the figure's hand, but before he could do more than pry the fingers away to take a closer look at it, he suddenly felt something grab him by the throat, forcing his helmet upwards. He tried to reach up and activate his helmet's radio, but the figure slammed his head into the ceiling before he could do more than move his arm.

When the boat crew came by the next day and found no trace of the body or the Peacekeeper, none of them thought much about it, assuming that the body had been taken by the Peacekeeper to deal with everything back at their headquarters. It would take months at best before anyone found the Peacekeeper's body in the ocean along the side of where the boat had been docked, and by that point nobody would understand the significance of that particular body in any case.

Had anyone been at the docks that night, someone might have seen a thin figure, clad in fragments of green armour, hurrying deeper into the district, a faint green glow in its hands and an almost feral edge to its manner as it took in its new surroundings.

The crew of the boat would never learn the significance of their role in those events, but in a matter of weeks, all of Panem would be changed by the events of that night.


	2. Buried in Crystal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1: From this point onwards, this fic will be told from Katniss's POV; chronology-wise, we start relatively early in the Seventy-Fourth Games, at around the end of the third day at the point when Katniss was staying on the outskirts of the main arena after finding water (although things are different for a few other Tributes, as you'll see soon enough…).
> 
> 2: Credit should be owed to Relena Mishima, who served as inspiration for a few character details of one of the less-developed Tributes in these Games; if you haven't read them already, I can recommend her series _Valkyrie on Fire_ , starting with "I Am Not a Victim".

Even after watching the Games for years, it was still surprising to realise how much the Gamemakers edited when they were putting together the day's highlights, particularly this relatively early in the Games.

Seeing Peeta with the Career pack earlier had been a surprise, but I had already resolved to put that aside and focus on staying ahead of the Careers and gathering supplies until I had to confront anyone. Confronting them as I was wouldn't do any good, but after I'd managed to find some water and refresh myself, I felt more comfortable focusing on finding somewhere to rest for the night before I decided on a clearer plan. So far there hadn't been any trumpet calls since the girl from Eight had died after the Careers found her campfire, but I was hopeful that the other Tributes were doing something that would keep the Gamemakers engaged for a little while.

I was about to settle down for the night when I found my attention being drawn to a cliff-face a short walk away from my current location. For a moment I thought about just ignoring it, but the more I looked at the cliff, the more I began to consider the potential benefits it might offer. I'd been lucky to escape attention in the tree the night before, but after all the times I'd seen past Arenas offer such a variety of features, I wasn't going to overlook the possibility of finding a more secure place to rest for the night.

Making sure everything was in my bag and on my back, I headed up the hill towards the cliff-face, and soon found myself looking at a surprisingly deep cave in the shadows of a particular corner of the cliff. It was a surprise to find something this well-hidden in the arena, but I supposed it made sense for the Gamemakers to 'mix it up' a bit and give some of the non-Careers a potential base as well.

Walking cautiously into the cave, I was surprised to find that it was actually relatively deep; I didn't know where this cave was in relation to anything else, but this still seemed like an unexpected geographical detail in an Arena. I kept glancing back as I walked further into the cave, but while it wasn't that deep, it turned out to be surprisingly wide once I had walked through the entrance. Reaching out to carefully touch the wall nearest me, I moved carefully around the cave, feeling the rough rock against my fingertips-

My eyes widened in surprise as my fingers came in contact with a strange substance I didn't immediately recognise. I may not like the mines, but our schools still focused intensely on geological details such as the structure of rock formations, and this definitely didn't feel like anything I'd expected to find here. When I looked at the wall, I noticed a faint redness about it where my hand came in contact with the strange crystal, but it didn't feel particularly hot, and it seemed to be leading me to focus on a particular part in the middle of the wall.

As soon as the idea had occurred to me, I wondered where that particular thought had come from, but the more I thought about it the more it seemed as though there was something in this wall that was leadingme somewhere. I didn't feel as though I was being _made_ to do anything, and I definitely still felt as though I could leave here if I wanted to, but there was definitely something in this cave that felt… I had no idea how to describe it, but-

"What the Hell is that?"

Spinning around in shock, I found myself looking in horror at two of the other Tributes standing at either side of the mouth of the cave. I immediately recognised the large figure of the District Eleven male tribute, whose name I remembered was Thresh, but it took me a moment to recognise the red-haired girl on the other side of the cave entrance as the District Five girl, and even then I couldn't immediately recall her name. Quick as a flash I pulled out the throwing knife Clove had tried to kill me with and held it defensively in front of myself; it wasn't the best weapon, but I had to at least _try_ -

"Easy, easy!" Thresh held up his hands, the girl on the other side following his example.

"Easy?" I repeated, even as I kept the knife between me and them; the girl might be unarmed, but Thresh would have clearly been the bigger threat even without that curved sword at his side.

"We're not going to fight you," the girl said, looking at me with a tentative smile before her gaze shifted to the strange wall behind me. "I just… what is this place?"

"I… I don't know," I said, lowering my knife slightly even as I kept my gaze fixed on them both; they both seemed to share my cautious intrigue at this cave, but I wasn't going to drop my guard completely. "I was just checking out the cave, and…"

"Yeah… me too," the girl nodded, her sharp features putting me in mind of a curious fox as she looked over my shoulder. "Seriously, what is with this place?"

"…No idea," I conceded, turning back to look at the wall; I wasn't going to forget that we were currently adversaries, but if neither of them were going to attack me, this was early enough in the Games that I wasn't going to attack them either. "I thought it might just be a good place to use as a kind of base, but all this… it seems a bit _too_ neat."

"Yeah, not like the Gamemakers to give a non-Career this kind of possible edge…" Thresh said, voice trailing off as he reached out a hand towards the wall. As soon as his fingers came in contact with it, unlike the red light it had produced when I touched it, the whole wall seemed to pulse with what I could only think of as a black light.

"What-?" the girl I was going to call 'Foxface' for the moment said, reaching out to touch the wall herself, only to be met with a strange blue glow in turn.

"That's pretty…" a voice said from behind us. Turning back, I was once again shocked to find Rue, the tiny District Eleven Tribute, standing cautiously at the door.

I inwardly cursed at this turn of events; I had no problem waiting to confront Thresh and 'Foxface' until after they did something to me, but I knew that I _really_ didn't want to have to kill Rue.

"What're you doing here, little girl?" Thresh said, a defensive edge to his tone as he looked at her. He didn't look as though he was going to do anything to her, but at the same time, he seemed to be just as aware as I was that these Games could only end one way.

"I was… following her," Rue said, indicating me.

"Me?" I repeated in surprise.

"It… seemed like a good idea?" Rue shrugged uncertainly. "I would have gone with Thresh, but you went the other way, and…"

"You went for the woods rather than the fields, huh?" Thresh nodded at the youngest Tribute with a brief smile. "Good call; get lost and hide until you've got a plan."

"Thanks," Rue smiled back at him before she walked further into the cave to touch the strange wall herself. The four of us waited for a moment, but the crystal showed no sign of responding to her touch like it had the other two.

"Maybe it-?" I began as I placed my hand against the wall again, wondering if whatever powered this trick had run down, only to be met with a more intense version of the same red glow I'd noticed earlier. As though on cue, Foxface and Thresh moved forward to touch it again themselves, and the wall once again pulsed with the same inexplicable light show it had created earlier.

"OK, that's weird, right?" Thresh looked at me after the strange black light had faded from the wall.

"Definitely," I nodded at him before I glanced at Foxface. "Does this remind you of anything?"

"You're asking me?" The girl looked at me in a pointed manner.

"Well, you're from Five; I just thought you might have some idea about-"

"And you're from Twelve, but I'm not asking you what this wall's made of-"

"I don't know _what_ it's made of, but I wondered if you might have an idea how it's doing that-"

Thresh cut us off when he slammed his sword into the centre of the wall, creating a deep crack in the crystalline structure. As he stepped back, he raised the weapon to prepare for another attack, but the crack seemed to expand rapidly up and down the wall before the crystal wall seemed to basically pop open, revealing five small glowing objects inside it.

Their colour was hard to make out in the dark cave, but it looked like each object was about the size of a hand, with a thick outer layer made of something that looked like gold, around a central crystal of some sort. Each crystal was a distinct colour from the other four, and also seemed to match up with the lighting pattern it had displayed so far; red, blue and black were clearly visible, but I could also see a yellow one and a colour I was going to tentatively identify as pink until I had a better idea.

"Did you-?" I began as I looked over at Thresh.

"No," he shook his head, looking uncertainly between the sword in his hand and the hole in the wall. "I just… it's like how we found this place; I just _felt_ like I should do it."

"And what an interesting little guess that was," a taunting voice said from the cave entrance. "Look at this; four little outliers, all in one fascinating place…"

As we spun around, I cursed my lack of attention as I found Glimmer and Peeta standing at the cave entrance, Peeta standing slightly behind Glimmer with a sword held awkwardly in his hand while she stood in the middle of the cave entrance, an arrow aimed in our direction. My own experience with the bow made it clear that Glimmer wasn't truly comfortable with that weapon, but if she fired at this range she'd have to be completely useless not to hit _anything_ , and even if Thresh, Foxface or I could get to her before she had her next arrow ready, Peeta was still in a position to-

My thoughts on the potential threat posed by the new arrivals were interrupted when the entire cave seemed to shake around us, just as the crystal wall pulsed once again. Glimmer lowered the bow in shock at the sight, but I didn't have the chance to think about taking advantage of it before the wall seemed to explode in a burst of multi-coloured light and something struck me in the back of the head. I grabbed the thing on instinct, and was surprised to find myself holding the red-centred object that had been in the wall before Thresh cracked it. Looking up, I saw that the other four objects had also struck one of the others; Thresh and Foxface were holding the black and blue objects respectively, while Glimmer had dropped her arrow and was looking in confusion at the pink object in her left hand even as she kept hold of the bow in her right, and Peeta was just staring at the yellow one as though he didn't know what to do with it.

"What the-?" he said, looking up at me as though looking for answers, before the crack on the wall suddenly seemed to expand down the wall to spread across the floor. The rest of our sudden group were able to quickly duck to either side of the cave before the crack could catch us, but Rue, whether frozen in fear or just unsure where to go, was caught in the middle of the cave, practically right in the path of the crack. Thresh and I were just moving to pull her to safety when the crack reached her and Rue fell through the ground, screaming in terror before we all heard a faint splash.

" _Rue_!" Thresh and I yelled, running up to the edge of the crack as soon as the ground around us had stopped shaking. Looking down, I was relieved to see that the little girl was still alive in the small pool of water below, paddling urgently as she looked up at us.

"Are you OK?" Foxface called down, joining Thresh and I crouching on either side of the crack.

"I'm fine!" Rue called up, even as she looked around herself in confusion. "Wh… where am I?"

"Some kind of underground water system, would be my guess," another voice put in. Looking up, I was surprised to see that Glimmer and Peeta had joined us in looking into the crack, Glimmer's bow slung over her shoulder and the Career looking into the newly-exposed lake with what seemed like genuine concern. "There were meant to be a few of these scattered around, although I'm not sure if the Games have ever used something like this before."

"Really?" Foxface looked at Glimmer, her curiosity apparently greater than her initial fear of the Career. "Never?"

"Well, we've obviously watched more than a few of the old Games back in the Academy, and this is… well, it's the kind of thing that would stand out," Glimmer observed. "I mean, that mass flooding in the Seventieth Games was the last time the ability to swim was a really big deal, and you wouldn't _believe_ the rumours about that one-"

Not wanting to hear more about rumours in the Career districts, I secured my backpack and jumped into the crack; it wasn't that far down, the walls didn't seem that sheer, and Rue might need help getting out, whereas most of Twelve had at least been taught the basics of swimming in case of mine flooding or in case it came up in some future Game.

I only reminded myself of the fact that only one of us could get out of this when I hit the water, but even as I surfaced I didn't regret my decision. Maybe Rue would 'have' to die later on in the Games, but as long as I had a choice I wasn't going to leave a twelve-year-old girl to drown just because it was easier that way.

When I realised that I was surrounded by a strange red glow as I carefully positioned myself in the water alongside Rue, I didn't really need to glance at my jacket's inside pocket to realise that the glow had something to do with that strange thing Thresh had found in the walls.

 _What is going on here_?


	3. Into the Cave

I didn't have time to think any further about the cause of my sudden strange glow before more water struck me in the fact, and suddenly all four of the other Tributes who had found the cave were floating in the water around me.

"What-?" I began.

"Would you believe idle curiosity?" 'Foxface' said, smiling at me as she indicated the blue glow that was now surrounding her as she floated alongside the rest of us.

"Personally, I wasn't going to leave the kid down here," Thresh added, indicating Rue with a brief smile.

"And trust me, nobody wants to see a little kid drown," Glimmer put in with a pointed stare as she indicated Rue. "C'mon, when we're this early in the Game, that's just… well, it's petty cruelty, really."

"Right…" I said. I didn't entirely buy Glimmer's explanation, especially after what I'd glimpsed of her actions in the opening bloodbath, but on the other hand I wasn't going to question someone's motives when it wouldn't be that hard for her to drown all five of us if she was fast enough. "I don't suppose you have any idea what's going on with all this?"

"Me?" Glimmer looked back with exaggerated innocence that was definitely aided by the pink light around her. "Why should I know anything?"

"'Cause that Academy of yours probably makes you watch every single previous Game until you know them all backwards?" Thresh observed with a cool edge to his tone that was somehow reinforced by his own surrounding black light. "You expect us to believe that you wouldn't remember somethin' like this?"

"Well, when you put it like that… yeah, we've watched a _lot_ of past Games back in the Academy, and they _never_ had anything like this," Glimmer nodded affirmatively. "I mean, where's the point in setting up some glowing wall to lure a bunch of us into one place and then drop us all into some pit? It's got a good bit of suspense for the buildup, but after that it's just boring; there's a reason they try and avoid cold weather being an issue for the Games, and it's not just because it'd be a crime to make us girls wrap up warm."

"I'll… take your word for that," Foxface said, shooting an awkward glance at me which made it clear she wasn't sure how to feel about that observation even if she agreed that the source was likely reliable. "So… what do we do here?"

"Get to the edge-" Peeta began as he indicated the wall.

"Hold on… you all feel that, right?" I said, looking around at the others as I felt that same strange nagging itch that had brought me to the cave in the first place, now driving me downwards for some reason. "It's like… I don't know…"

I finally gave up on trying to explain it and just dived down under the water, trying to get past that strange sensation and find the source of it. For a moment as I swam down I strained to see anything, my eyes unused to the stinging water, before I felt my outstretched hand pass _through_ something and into a dry area. Even more curious as to what was going on, I kicked my legs harder and soon felt the water vanish from around my head, opening my eyes to see that I was looking _down_ into another cave, water beneath/above my head with no obvious way to hold it back.

I fought down an initial panic as I gave another powerful kick, adjusting my body as it reached the edge of whatever-this-was so that I fell out of the water and landed on my feet and hands rather than my face. As I quickly stood up, I looked up to see the other five coming down to join me, four of them glowing with that strange light and the fifth holding onto the black and yellow figures until they reached the bottom. I quickly moved to grab Rue, but the other four followed my own example, adjusting their descent through the water-ceiling so that they all basically landed on their feet.

"Whoa…" Foxface looked up at the water we'd just descended through, the ripples of our departure already vanishing like we were looking up at some kind of inverted lake. "Now _that_ is cool!"

"OK," I turned to look at Glimmer and indicated the watery roof above us, "I feel safe assuming _that_ isn't normal for the Games?"

"I… I don't think _anyone_ could have done that," Glimmer nodded awkwardly, looking uncertainly at the ceiling of water before she turned back to face me. "I mean, force fields have been a thing for decades even outside the Games, but there's no way anyone would create something like that and stick it somewhere that… isolated."

"Something can be isolated out here?" Thresh looked at Glimmer with an incredulous stare. "I thought they literally _covered_ these arenas with cameras?"

"Mostly they can pull it off, but in practice there's always a few obscure areas here and there that the Gamemakers don't realise they've missed until one of the Tributes finds it first," Glimmer shrugged. "It's not exactly something they advertise, and most of the time they can dispatch a drone or two to make up for it before anyone watching realises what's going down, but there's sometimes still a couple of minutes in the live broadcasts where they lose track of the Tributes until they can send something."

"So… there's a chance we're OK?" Rue asked; her tentative expression made me think of the times Prim would take my hand for comfort, except that Rue clearly wasn't sure she knew who to turn to in this situation. "I mean, that we're not being watched right now?"

"If anyone had found that stuff when this Arena was being set up, they'd have cordoned that cave off and be trying to work out what the Hell this was all about while keeping us _away_ from here; Hell, they'd probably have tried to set up a whole new _arena_ to study this place properly!"

"Has that ever happened?" Peeta asked, looking honestly curious at this new bit of trivia. "I mean, they only realise that something about an Arena doesn't work while they're building it… or even during the Games?"

"Comes and goes, according to rumours at the Academy," Glimmer shrugged. "Like I said, they use drones to help track us in case we accidentally find some area they didn't cover with suitable cameras, and that's worked out for the most part. Gamemakers always try and avoid repeating themselves and do some surveys for new future sites each year, and they keep pretty good records, but there's always the risk that some area will turn out to be a habitat for an endangered animal or something."

"People in the Capitol care about that kind of thing?" Foxface raised her eyebrows in surprise.

"I guess some people like the chance to get out for a few days and look at things in the wild," Glimmer shrugged. "Keep in mind I'm still only from One; just because the Capitol likes us more doesn't mean we go there a lot."

"Still a lot closer than-" Thresh began.

"OK!" I stepped forward, raising my hands as Thresh and Glimmer started to glare at each other. "Let's just… take a look at what else is down here before we try and get back up."

"You want us to look around here?" Peeta looked at me in surprise before indicating Glimmer. "With _her_?"

"Hey, we're all down here, lover-boy," Glimmer looked at Peeta with slightly exaggerated indignation.

"And how do we know you're not going to-?"

"What; start killing you all?" Glimmer looked at Peeta in exasperation. "I'm not some psycho nut, pal; I won't just start stabbing you all in the back because I feel like it."

"Aren't we _meant_ to-?"

"Not like this," Glimmer cut Thresh off. "Even if I'm wrong about there being no cameras out here, there's no way _anyone_ would think this was a good Games strategy; one Career and a bunch of randoms this early on?"

"Randoms?" Foxface repeated with a notable edge to her voice.

"I just meant that there's no way anyone involved in the Games could think sticking us together was an interesting idea this early on," Glimmer clarified, waving a hand at our small group. "I'm not saying any of you are going to be easy to take down, but we lost half the Tributes in the bloodbath and we've barely had a chance for anyone to show off yet. Seriously, putting us all together like this risks ending the Games too early, and that just takes away any chance for a good show-"

"OK!" I said, stepping forward as Thresh and Peeta looked at Glimmer in a particularly cold manner while Foxface moved to place a comforting hand on Rue's shoulder. "Can we just… stop that right now?"

"Just stop this?" Peeta looked at me in surprise.

"Look, I'm… well, it's like Glimmer said; nobody in the Games would do this to us on purpose, so isn't this worth exploring further?" I said, surprised at the words I was speaking even as I looked at the cavern beyond. "If whatever's going on here goes beyond the Games, I think we can all agree to at least a truce at least until we get out of here, don't you?"

"Sounds… good to me," Glimmer nodded, albeit with a suddenly tentative expression I couldn't explain.

"I can work with that," Foxface grinned.

"No problem here," Thresh nodded as Rue gave her own thumbs-up.

"…Fine," Peeta nodded, looking at me in a manner I couldn't entirely understand.

"Let's go," I said, indicating the cave beyond our strange inverted pool, trying to ignore the faint rumbling sensation from the cave around us. My small knife in my hand, I led the way, surprised to find how the rest of us fell into a pattern, Glimmer wiping down her bowstring and drawing a new arrow while Peeta and Thresh stood on either side of Rue and Foxface. As we rounded a corner, I led our strange new alliance into a surprisingly large cavern, about the size of the house I lived in back in Twelve, but my attention was more immediately drawn to the sight at the other end of the cave.

The rocks and the opening around us could have been formed by nature, but the large metal object at the opposite side of the cavern was clearly an artificial structure. Something was literally sticking out of the rock, with a formation that put me in mind of the hovercraft that had taken us to our 'departure points' before the Games began, but it looked as though whatever this thing was had been stuck in the cave for some time. There was a faint blue glow to the object, and as we drew closer, it became clear that there was far more it than the part close to the ground; I wasn't sure if I'd be surprised to find out that the mountain the cave was in was basically just a 'shell' for whatever this was.

"Holy _crap_ -!" Glimmer began, slamming her hand against one of the lower rocks in awe, only to give us all something new to think about when the rock literally broke in half where she struck it.

"What the _Hell_?" Thresh looked at the rock in surprise before he looked at Glimmer. "Was there some strength-enhancing drug in the Cornucopia we didn't know about?"

"What?" Glimmer looked at him in confusion.

"I was watching the opening bloodbath; if you were tough enough to do _that_ when this started, a couple of fights would have ended a bit quicker."

"That's… OK, point," Glimmer nodded in acknowledgement before she looked more earnestly at Thresh. "But I swear I didn't take _anything_ like that!"

"You don't think…?" Peeta said, looking tentatively at the yellow thing in his hands.

"What?" Foxface looked at Peeta with a smile as she held up her own blue object. "You think that these things gave us-?"

She cut off her own question when she copied Glimmer's action and ended up breaking a chunk off another bit of rock with a nonchalant shove of her hand.

"OK…" Peeta said, moving towards the chunk of rock Glimmer had broken off. He put the yellow coin in his pocket before he bent down to pick up the rock, staring in awe as he effortlessly found himself holding the heavy stone above him when it had to be twice the size of his head. "Yeah, _this_ shouldn't be this light."

"OW!" Rue yelled, prompting the rest of us to turn and see her rubbing her hand as she glared at the wall.

"Nothing happened?" Foxface looked sympathetically at the girl.

"Nothing happened," Rue nodded, looking sulkily at the rest of us with an expression that reminded me of Prim when I'd initially objected to Buttercup joining us in the house. "I guess it _is_ just the coins."

"Coins?" Thresh repeated, taking the black object out of his pocket and studying it for a moment before he shrugged. "Yeah, 'coin' works, I guess."

"Coin?" I repeated, taking my own red object out and holding it up, only to jump back when something seemed to _uncurl_ in the massive metal object above us. Walking up to what looked like a flight of stairs leading up to the new opening, I took a deep breath and placed my foot on the lowest step, and tried not to make my relief obvious when nothing happened.

"For what it's worth, there's no way the Capitol did _this_ ," Foxface put in, indicating the walls around us. "Geology wasn't a strong point of mine, but all this stuff… it looks like this thing's been here for so long that the rock's grown _around_ it."

"Around it?" Thresh repeated. "How old would something have to be for _that_ to happen?"

"Getting into millions," Foxface observed.

" _Damn_ ," Glimmer said as she stared at the ship. "This is _really_ getting interesting…"

"Should we… really be doing this?" Peeta asked uncertainly.

"You're going to start asking a question like that _now_?" Glimmer looked at my fellow Twelve resident with an incredulous grin. "C'mon; we've come this far!"

Peeta could only look anxiously up at the open door, even as I found myself cautiously leading the way up into the ship. With the rest of the group behind me, the top of the stairs led to the middle of a strange circular platform, surprisingly pristine despite the apparent age of this ship, with various circles around the walls and four paths leading away from the platform. As the others joined me in the middle of this strange room, there was a faint beeping sound from somewhere above us before the very walls of the ship seemed to move around us, certain 'circles' opening to reveal further passages leading into other parts of this…

I was reluctant to call this a 'ship', but those things had definitely looked like engines for some kind of flying craft.

Even as the staircase we'd just come up sealed behind us, I tried to work out what could have created something like this; how could a flying ship of this size have been stuck down here for so long ago that the rock had grown around it like that…

"What was that?" Rue said, suddenly grabbing me by the leg as she looked towards one of the circles. Following her gaze, I saw a golden light as something appeared at the end of another corridor leading deeper into the ship. Lost for better ideas, I yelled urgently at the others before I ran off down a corridor opposite; whatever was down here, I had a strong feeling that we wouldn't want to meet it with only a few blades and a bow to defend ourselves with. As the other five followed my example, Thresh and Foxface pressed themselves up against one wall while Glimmer joined Peeta and me on the opposite side. Rue was just about to join us when something grabbed her and pulled her back along the corridor, the girl letting out a terrified scream-

"They're real!"


	4. From Alpha to Zordon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought about making this longer, but I decided that it would be better to just introduce Zordon and Alpha here and focus on the Tributes' reactions to being chosen in the next one; hope you like the results.

Leaping out from around the corner to look at the source of that voice, I was sure that I wasn't the only one of our strange group to be confused at what we had just found. The figure that had grabbed Rue was barely as tall as Rue herself, with a squat body and long arms that put me in mind of the monkeys I'd seen in some of Prim's old nature books. However, until a monkey, this creature's body was made of red and grey metal, with its belly reminding me of the chain mail that some past tributes had used to protect themselves once ordered by suitable supporters. The most significant difference, however, was its large wide head, which was shaped like a thick silver disc that had two glowing yellow eyes on either side, along with what looked like a large crystal globe in the centre of its head.

Letting out a defiant yell, Thresh charged towards the creature with his blade raised, only for the thing to extend one of its arms and literally throw Thresh over itself like he weighed nothing. As Thresh flew down the corridor this thing had just emerged from, I took up a position standing defensively over Rue as Peeta, Foxface and Glimmer gathered behind me, Glimmer and I holding our weapons while Peeta and Foxface just tried to back us up.

"We will kill you," I said, trying to sound dramatic.

"Kill me?" the strange creature said with a certain light scepticism in its voice. "How?"

"There's six of us," Glimmer said, raising an arrow that even I knew wasn't likely to work on whatever this thing was.

"Six?" the robot repeated, looking over the five of us curiously before turning to the corridor where it had thrown Thresh, its head moving with a speed that made me think of surprise. " _Six_ of you? But that's- Rita had hers on her when- ah, right; the little one's just a tag-along."

"…Tag-along?" Rue repeated, looking at the small thing in confusion.

"Look, never mind about us; what _are_ you?" Foxface asked, waving her hand at the thing in confusion.

"I'm Alpha Five," the robot replied, looking back to see Thresh had gotten back to his feet. "Ah, good, you're up; feel free to stick with the others, just don't attack me again, could you?"

"What's an… Alpha Five?" Rue asked, as Thresh moved to cautiously join the rest of us.

"An alphormic lorcaid persona android."

"…That mean anything to you?" Thresh glanced at Foxface, clearly still a bit bitter about being thrown aside like that.

"I think I understood about half of those words, and I'm not _entirely_ sure the other half even _are_ words," Foxface clarified.

"Hold on; if you're Alpha _Five_ , what happened to Alphas One through Four?" Glimmer added with a slight grin.

"Lost, destroyed, dismantled and replaced due to the need for an upgrade," the robot replied with a brief shrug before it spread its arms and seemed to be grinning at us. "But look at you all! Different colours, different kids… You're all so _young_ -looking! I've been waiting for this for so long-!"

"Waiting?" I cut in, already uncertain what kind of answer I wanted to hear. "How… long have you been waiting?"

"What's the day?"

"…Monday?" Peeta said uncertainly, after a brief count on his fingers to confirm the date.

"Then… sixty-five million years," 'Alpha' replied.

I was relieved to see that the others looked just as shocked at that revelation as I was. The notion of a talking machine was enough of a stretch, but the idea that this thing had been around _that_ long…

"How… how the _Hell_ are you that old?" Glimmer asked, looking like she would have dropped her weapons if she had been less controlled. "But… were we even-?"

"You're alien, aren't you?" Foxface looked at Alpha with a tentative smile.

"Alien?" Peeta, Rue and I looked at the girl from Five in surprise.

"As in not from this planet," the other girl said, her smile broadening as she looked at the small robot and took the blue thing out of her pocket. "This ship… you're from another world, right? And so are these?"

"Bingo," Alpha 'nodded' at us before he cocked his head. "You're all so young looking… oh, that reminds me, I disabled those trackers in your arms when you entered the ship; hope I didn't do anything culturally insensitive, but-"

" _Trackers_?" all six of us yelled.

"Our trackers?" Glimmer looked at her forearm, in the same place where I had been injected with my own tracker on the way to the arena. "You _shut them down_?"

"Uh… yeah?" Alpha said uncertainly. "I apologise if that's breaking some kind of cultural rule I don't know about, but part of the rules are that nobody else can know what you are-"

"OK, let's just back up and talk about this for a few moments, right?" Foxface said urgently, her eyes flickering from Alpha to the rest of us as though trying to work out what she should take in next. "If you just shut the trackers down when we got inside, what about how long it took us to get down here? Could someone have detected us going into this cave in the first place?"

"Based on what I've detected about those trackers, as soon as you entered the pool, they wouldn't have been strong enough to transmit a signal," the robot explained. "Whoever was tracking you might have been aware that you were in this area, but the rocks would have at least hindered the signal until you met me, and I can confirm that I shut them down as soon as you got inside."

"Right…" Foxface nodded tentatively. "So… the trackers would have probably stopped telling anyone else where we were once we got into the caves… and now there's literally _no_ way anyone else can know where we are?"

"No," Alpha said.

"In other words… everyone up there thinks we're dead?" Peeta asked.

"Probably assume we set off some kind of cave-in-" Thresh smirked.

"What the _Hell_?" Glimmer looked indignantly at Alpha. "You mean everyone up there thinks we died _offscreen_?"

"Offscreen?" I repeated, looking at Glimmer incredulously. I knew that Careers were more focused on the Games than other Districts, but the idea that she was that focused on it…

"Seriously?" Foxface studied Glimmer with an expression that matched my own. "We just discovered that aliens are real and you're still worried about the Games?"

"Hey, I'm a Career; we don't die 'offscreen'!" Glimmer protested. "We go out in a big dramatic showdown with our fellows, or at the very _least_ we get taken down by someone who knows what they're doing; they seriously think I died in a _cave_?"

"…You get that you're not actually dead, One, right?" Thresh pointed out.

"That's not the point-!"

"No, the _point_ is that… Alpha… hasn't been waiting around here for millions of years just for the sake of it," I interrupted, looking curiously at the strange robot. As much as I was suddenly worried about what my mother and Prim must be going through thinking that I was dead, we could focus on the implications of this twist in the Games once we'd established what was going on here. "So what _did_ you bring us here for?"

"Turn around," Alpha said solemnly. I wasn't sure what to expect when I followed his suggestion, but was shocked to find that what had been the main chamber had suddenly become a larger enclosed area with five circular panels arranged around a strange glowing golden… _thing_ in the centre of the room. The wall opposite the entrance had a strange pattern on it that vaguely reminded me of the chain mail I'd seen some Tributes receive as particularly expensive gifts, but as we approached the panels around the glowing thing in the middle, I could swear that they were starting to glow, as though somehow responding to our presence.

"So what do we do here?" Peeta asked, keeping his voice low as Alpha seemed to be examining something around each panel.

"Hit it and run the first chance we get," Thresh said grimly.

"…Shouldn't hurt, but let's see…" Alpha muttered, studying the glowing panels before he looked back at us. "OK, please step into the footprints- except for the tag-along, obviously."

"That's me, right?" Rue asked.

"Her name is Rue," Thresh and I said simultaneously.

"Right, sorry; as you can imagine, my people skills are… well, I haven't had much practice," Alpha 'shrugged', before he indicated the panels. "Anyway, if you could?"

I wasn't entirely surprised to find Peeta walking up to one of the panels himself; even if he was as aware of the possible consequences as I was, anything that got him out of the Games would be good news. He tentatively placed one foot on the panel only to pull back when his movement triggered a brief burst of yellow light in the same apparent colour as the object he'd found. Once the rest of us were sure that nothing else was going to happen, Glimmer, Thresh, Foxface and I moved around to the other panels, while Rue waited uncertainly beside Alpha.

On one level, I wasn't sure why I was going along with this, but at the same time, it seemed like such a small request, and Alpha had already passed up a chance to do any serious to Thresh even when he'd deliberately attacked the robot. Looking around, I saw Peeta and Foxface move to stand on the platforms, while Thresh and Glimmer took a moment to assess their panels before following their example. Taking a deep breath, I stepped onto the panel, and suddenly the wall behind us seemed to ripple as though it was a river standing on its side and someone had thrown a rock into it.

"It works!" Alpha yelled, running around the panels to stand near the wall as the rest of the room started to shake. "This is great; it's working! Zordon? Are you there, Zordon?"

I didn't even need to ask who or what Alpha was talking to, as I saw a face appear from the middle of the wall. It was hard to be certain, but from what I could tell the face looked like it was intended to represent a human, or at least something close enough to human that there weren't any obvious differences. The face and Alpha spoke in an unfamiliar language as the face seemed to be trying to look around itself, leaving the five of us to get off the panels and move back towards Rue. The face sounded slightly panicked, which didn't make me feel any better about the situation, but as far as I could tell Alpha was trying to reassure the face about something…

With the ship shaking around us, I decided that this wasn't the time to question that particular detail; we'd done whatever the robot had wanted us to do, so the priority now was to get away. Once again unaware that I had taken the lead until it had already started, I hurried towards the door to the room, only for it to slam shut before we could get out.

"Crap," Foxface muttered.

"Think we could-?" Thresh began as he raised his fists.

"Come forward, please!" Alpha's voice suddenly called over to us. Turning around, I saw the small robot was still standing in front of the now-still head, which appeared to be waiting at the other end of the room with a vaguely curious expression on its face.

"Do we have a choice?" Rue asked tentatively.

"I have a feeling he wouldn't have shut that door if we could just bash it down with… whatever new strength we just picked up, so I'm going to say we don't," Glimmer put in, before she looked over at me. "Shall we?"

"…Might as well," I nodded, walking cautiously forward as Alpha turned back to speak briefly with the face about something else.

"Look!" the little robot said, eagerly looking back at us. "It's Zordon!"

"And… who's 'Zordon'?" Foxface asked, even as she joined us in walking cautiously towards the other end of the room.

"Zordon… they don't know who you are," I vaguely heard Alpha say in a low voice before he turned back to us. "Come in, come in!"

"These are them?" the face that was apparently Zordon said, now speaking an intelligible language in a deep voice as it studied us. "They are so small… and six?"

"Yeah, the littlest one's basically a tag-along; I think she was just there when the other five found the coins," Alpha shrugged.

" _Hey_!" Rue glared indignantly at Alpha even as I suddenly realised she had taken my hand.

"We're not leaving her," I spoke up, surprising myself as I looked at the face. "Rue's staying with us."

"I see," the apparent 'Zordon' said, before he seemed to 'turn' to face Alpha. "You mean to tell me that the fate of the universe has been placed in the hands of these children?"

"The _universe_?" Foxface and Peeta yelled incredulously.

"Hold on; we're- you want us to save the _universe_?" Glimmer looked at the face in shock, waving her bow for emphasis. "What are- how did _we_ get that job?"

"They're teenagers," Alpha explained as though that justified our reactions. "I ran a check; it's basically somewhere between infancy and full maturity."

"…Show me the coins," the face said, looking solemnly at us. Feeling almost obliged to respond, I took out the red 'coin' (this was no currency I'd ever seen before, but it looked kind of coin-like) and held it up, glancing around to see that the other four with coins were doing the same.

"The Morphing Grid is never wrong," Zordon said, a slight edge to his tone that I couldn't quite understand. "If the power coins have returned to the ship with these…"

"Teenager!" Alpha called out.

"With these teenagers," Zordon finished, "than these teenagers are the Power Rangers."

The solemn nature of those words was enough to halt my initial suspicion.

I didn't know what this situation had to do with us, but I was becoming increasingly sure that nothing here had anything to do with the Games.

I just had no idea if that was a good thing, a bad thing, or something else altogether…


	5. The Choice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Michael Weyer has created a TV Tropes page for this fic; feel free to add to it if you're so inclined.

"Power Rangers?" Peeta repeated in confusion, breaking me out of my own current contemplation.

"Is that some Career thing?" Thresh looked over at Glimmer.

"Do I _look_ like I know more about any of this crap than you do?" Glimmer protested. "Seriously, I'm not out to get you guys-!"

"This is the Games, One; you're _all_ out to get me-"

"I don't think that really matters right now-!" Peeta tried to cut in.

"Hey!" Foxface yelled, waving her hands urgently as she indicated the strange golden energy cloud thing in the middle of the room. When I looked at it closely, there seemed to be a kind of spherical shape at the heart of the 'cloud', with gold and green energy 'leaking' from it as though it was damaged in some way, and it was just possible to see some kind of image in the middle of it. "Uh, question?"

"Yes?" Zordon and Alpha looked at her curiously.

"If I'm right, this sphere… it's talking about the history of those 'Power Rangers', right?" the small redhead asked, looking at the sphere with a thoughtful expression, which was currently showing five figures in some kind of armour. "They were a team that… protected life? And life was some kind of… bright light? Or a piece of light?"

"Yes," Zordon said, the giant head sounding approving of the other girl's assessment. "It is called the Zeo Crystal."

"I love this part," Alpha said, the sphere now showing a glowing crystal of some sort.

"And every planet in the universe that has life, has a piece of the Crystal buried inside it."

"Every planet?" Glimmer repeated in surprise, as the energy showed a round form that reminded me of an image of Earth I'd seen in an old geography book in school. "How does that work?"

"A story for another time," Zordon said solemnly.

"What's important is that, sixty-five million years ago, Zordon's team died defending Earth's fragment of the Crystal, not too far from here," Alpha cut in urgently.

"The coins have chosen you five," Zordon explained solemnly. "Now you must protect the Zeo Crystal and life on Earth."

"Because we're these… 'Power Rangers'?" Thresh said sceptically as he held up his own coin. "Just because 'the coins chose us'? You're seriously relying on _these_ to pick your fighters?"

"The Power Coins are manifestations of the energy of the Morphing Grid, the energy that gave all Rangers their abilities," Zordon explained. "The Grid itself is what chooses the Rangers; the Coins are merely the Grid's power making itself known in our plane of existence-"

"OK, seriously, is this some kind of joke?" Glimmer cut in with an incredulous stare. "You want _us_ to protect some magic rock that gave life to this planet with 'coins' that give us this freaky strength boost? I've been caught in an earthquake, I've got water in my boots, and I've got a goddamn wedgie from where-"

"More than we needed to know, Glim," Foxface cut her off with a teasing grin, before she looked at Zordon with a more respectful manner. "But… look, no offence, but she's got a point; you seriously want _us_ to save this planet? Do you even know what we were doing when your coins dragged us into this cave?"

"What you were doing before does not matter," Zordon replied. "What matters is _this_."

There was a strange… I could only think of it as a _pulse_ of energy, and suddenly I was floating in the air, the other five suspended around the room-

_I was in my bed back in District Twelve, looking up at my ceiling before I stood up. Drawn by some unexplained instinct, I headed for the door, and found myself looking out at the main street of my home District, strangely deserted of people._

_I was standing in the middle of the street, my house had vanished, and I heard a voice whispering an unfamiliar word, before I saw another figure at the other end of the street-_

_Some kind of dark cloud erupted from the other end of the street, tainted with green energy, and suddenly the figure was standing in front of me, revealing an older woman with dark hair and ragged black dress, faint lines on her skin like some Capitol make-up that hadn't worked out properly-_

_People were suddenly standing around me- not people, they were bald statues, reeling backwards from something- everything around me had turned grey and there was some kind of intense wind- there were screams from all around me- the woman was holding a golden staff topped with some kind of glowing green object-_

_The woman placed a hand on my chest and I suddenly felt as though I hadn't washed or eaten in days- I felt starved and my skin felt like it was about to come apart the next time I moved- I tried to get away from the woman, but the 'statues' around me collapsed into dust the moment I touched them as I staggered back-_

I heard a terrified scream and found myself back in the chamber, but when I looked around to find the source of the scream, I was slightly relieved to find that it was only Rue, curled up in a corner; she might be afraid, but at least she wasn't hurt as far as I could see. I quickly ran over to give her a reassuring hug, even as the other four Tributes got back to their feet and staggered around the room in shock; I vaguely heard Alpha say something, but my priority right now was calming Rue rather than listening to the strange metal man.

"Wh… what the _Hell_ was that?" Thresh glared up at the face on the wall.

"Why-why would you show us that… nightmare?" Peeta asked, actually looking like he was fighting the urge to fall over in terror as he leant against one of the panels.

"It's not a nightmare," Zordon replied. "If you do not take action, that will be the future,"

"Who… who was that woman?" Foxface asked, which at least suggested the others had seen what I'd seen.

"Her name is Rita Repulsa," Zordon answered. "She will create Goldar, a huge monster who will rip the crystal from the earth, and all life on your planet will die. With the Crystal, Rita will have the power to create and destroy worlds."

"So let me guess; you want us to kill this Rita woman first?" Glimmer asked, shaking her head with a grim smile. "Well, at least something hasn't changed…"

"She must be stopped," Zordon said firmly.

"When's she coming?" Foxface asked.

"She's already here," Alpha said, waving his arms as he spoke. "My best guess is that we have eleven months… sorry, days; eleven _days_."

I cursed under my breath at that news; as though getting into the Games hadn't been bad enough, now I had to deal with a threat like _that_?

"OK," Glimmer raised a hand. "If I'm following you, as we're Power Rangers… this is basically _our_ ship now, right?"

"Essentially."

"So if I walk through that door right now, it'll open?"

"Yes, of course."

"Right," Glimmer turned around and walked through the now-open door despite Alpha's tentative protests. Thresh scowled briefly, but took Rue by the hand and followed Glimmer, with Peeta and Foxface exchanging uncertain glances before going after them. I took a deep breath and looked uncertainly between the door and the large face on the wall before I moved to follow them-

"Katniss," Zordon's voice said suddenly, "My Ranger team died defending the Crystal from Rita. That's why I'm in this wall."

"How do you know my name?" I looked sharply at the face and the robot; I wasn't going to question exactly how I was talking to a man who was apparently dead until I'd worked out what I was actually going to _do_ about all this.

"Because it's you, Katniss Everdeen," Zordon said solemnly. "You are the leader. You are the Red Ranger."

"… _What_?" I looked at the wall in shock as I pulled the coin out of my pocket and held it up. "You mean I'm- just because this thing-?"

"Each Coin is attuned to particular personality types; blue for intelligence, black for raw power, yellow for balance and pink for compassion," Alpha put in.

"And… red for the leader?" I looked sceptically at the little robot even as I lowered my hand.

"Precisely," Alpha nodded.

"And you just _accept_ that?" I asked, pocketing the coin and looking between the robot and the face. "You don't even know anything about us-!"

"As I previously mentioned, the energy of the morphing grid draws in and responds to particular people; there's a reason you and the others were the ones who found the coins," Alpha explained. "Each coin chose you, and here you are."

"But we can't just- we have _families_ -!" I protested, even as I knew that argument was relatively weak when everyone else would basically believe we were dead already.

"I understand your concerns, Katniss," Zordon said. "I was chosen to become a Ranger when I was only somewhat older you, relatively speaking, but I had been raised in a culture that understood the duty and honour of such a calling… and have now been separated from my family for good because of that duty. The threat you now face in Rita…"

Despite only having a face to express himself, if Zordon had a body I was sure he would slumped down in a chair from the weight of what he was talking about. "She was once a Ranger herself, and even my friend, before she betrayed us in a quest for more power."

Turning around, I saw a figure in red armour in the middle of the golden cloud, before the scene shifted to show a female figure in green, standing in an authoritative manner that put me uncomfortably in mind of President Snow.

"She lost her way, and now she is just pure evil," Zordon finished. "I cannot explain what drove her to fall so far; all I can do is react and do my best to stop what she has become… which requires you all to take action."

"I… I'm sorry," I looked at the wall, struck by the pain on the giant expression even if I still felt uncertain about my own place in this mess.

"I already failed to stop her once," Zordon continued. "I regret that failure, but now, if you wish to protect your own families, you must bring back all of the Rangers and train your team to stop Rita… before she has the strength to find the Crystal."

"…Seriously?" I looked at Zordon incredulously, my sympathy forgotten in face of incredulity at this order. "I can barely take care of my mom and my sister, and now you want me to _lead_ people to save the world?"

"The coin would not have chosen you if you were not capable of it-"

"I need more than just the insight of something I didn't even know existed before now-!"

"I _recognise_ that I am putting a great deal on you all, but the fact is that there is _no_ _choice_ ," Zordon cut me off, frustration in his voice before he seemed to calm himself. "I wish that we had the time for me to acknowledge your concerns and take them into account, but the fact remains that Rita will come whether you are willing to fight her or not; all you can do at this moment is choose if you meet her head-on or hide from your duty and let everything you know die."

As much as I hated to acknowledge it, Zordon had a point. If Rita was as dangerous as he suggested she was, she was going to come for the rest of Panem and that 'Zeo Crystal' thing he had told us about whether there was anyone ready to fight her or not. I might not like the idea of being forced into another fight, but at least this time around it was a fight where I appeared to have more options than just 'kill everyone else and be the last one standing' if I wanted to get out myself…

As I walked out of the ship, I was relieved to find the rest of the group still standing around the cave under the pool; whether they'd been waiting for me or were just all debating their next move, I didn't know, but at least it made it easier for me to talk with them now.

"Uh… glad you're all here?" I said at last, before I decided to bite the bullet and looked over at Foxface. "Please, don't… take this the wrong way, but… what _is_ your name?"

"Olivia," the now-former Foxface said with a brief shrug. "But you can call me Liv."

"Liv?" Rue repeated.

"As in 'Livewire'," the redhead explained. "Parents were a bit old-fashioned when they chose my name, so I prefer Liv."

"It works," Thresh smiled briefly at her.

"Thanks," I nodded at the now-named Liv, before I turned to look around the cave with a solemn expression, still amazed that I was doing this to a group of people I had been preparing myself to kill less than an hour ago. "OK, I get that… well, none of us exactly knew each other before we found that cave, and we definitely _weren't_ expecting anything like this to happen…"

"Damn straight we weren't expecting anything like this; let's just get out of this pool and-"

"And then what?" I cut Glimmer off. "We go back to just… trying to kill each other in the Games?"

"Hey, at least we _know_ what we're doing there-!"

"And what about Alpha?" Rue asked, her expression suddenly tentative.

"Alpha?" Glimmer repeated incredulously. "Listen, kid, the little guy said he's been here for millions of years; I think he's old enough to take care of himself-"

"When nobody knew he was here to bother about," Peeta put in with a tentative expression on his face. "If we go out there, the moment the cameras see us, people are going to start wondering what happened to turn our trackers off, which means they'll come to this cave, which means they'll find Zordon and Alpha, which means…

"Which means all the stuff back there ends up in the Capitol's hands," Thresh finished, looking back at the ship with a sigh. "Damnit…"

"This just got complicated, didn't it?" Liv observed as she looked at Glimmer with a brief smile. "Wherever we came from, I think we're all agreed that letting anyone up there get their hands on this ship isn't a good thing?"

"And that's before you start wondering about how these Coins affected us," Peeta added as he held up his. "We've already seen that they made us stronger; what happens if someone realises what's happened and tries to… well, copy it?"

"Zordon said that the coins chose you; it sounded like nobody else _can_ use them-" Rue put in.

"And you really think anyone up there's going to just accept that?" Thresh disdainfully indicated the ceiling as he pulled out his own. "I'm not even sure _I'm_ happy about this; why do _I_ get the _black_ coin?"

"From what Zordon said, it's more of a… well, it's not just a racial thing," I said awkwardly; life in District Twelve was rough enough that skin colour was never a bit deal, but I recognised that it was still a delicate issue for some people. "He and Alpha explained that these coins are all drawn to certain… personality types or something like that; you got the black coin because you're the best of us in terms of raw power or something like that, just like… Liv… was chosen by the blue coin because she's the smartest."

"I am?" Liv grinned, looking at her coin with a new sense of appreciation. "Hey, how about that?"

"Yeah, yeah, we're colour-coded freaks; big whoop," Glimmer groaned. "Look, are we really going to believe that Rita crap?"

"Why not?" Rue asked, shivering slightly as she looked back at the ship. "And even if it's not… isn't it nicer down here than up there?"

" _Nicer_?" Glimmer looked at the little girl incredulously. "In some dark cave with a weird-looking robot and a face on the wall-?"

"That don't _want_ me to die in the next couple of weeks."

"…Gotta admit, that's a point," Thresh nodded. "I mean, sounds like we'll be going up against some steep odds if the big Z's telling the truth, but at least we don't have to kill _each other_ to last that long."

"Yeah, but… we're training to kill _someone_ -"

"Who's willing to do all that… black cloud of death stuff to the whole planet," Liv cut Peeta off. "I'm not saying it's better, but we already know that there's more going on here than the Games; if Zordon and Alpha just wanted us dead, they could have just left things alone."

"Point…" Peeta nodded tentatively at Liv before looking back at me. "So… we're going to do this?"

"You're all free to do what you want," I said, deciding to just cut to the chase. "But as for me… I don't know if I could have won the Games or not, but right now, it looks like Rita is the only thing directly standing between me and getting back to my family… so if I have to fight her to do that, I'll be staying here. The rest of you… you can do what you want."

I'd never been in a situation like this before, but as I stood in that stone cavern and looked around at the five people I'd been planning to kill barely an hour ago, I was surprised to find myself smiling as they all tentatively nodded at me in agreement.

I didn't know if I was ready to actually lead these people into anything, but at least I knew I wouldn't be alone in… whatever Zordon wanted us to do.


	6. Interlude: Reactions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A brief look at the reactions of other parties to the apparent 'losses' in the arena, and a brief reference to events from _The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes_ ; we return to Katniss in the next chapter.

**Clove**

When six cannons went off in short order, Clove had been pleasantly surprised, even before she saw who it was.

The Capitol would probably complain about the lack of a good show, but Clove didn't have a problem with this turn of events; anything that made it easier for her to get home was good for her. She was idly curious who or what could have been responsible for six Tributes getting killed off so quickly, but that was something she could find out once she won the Games and could take a look at the recap.

Besides, she didn't think she had any reason to complain about a few mysterious deaths when at least half of those had been trouble if the Games had let them stay in play for much longer. The redhead from Five and the little girl from Eleven obviously wouldn't have been a problem, and as tough as the boy from Twelve was, they could all see that he didn't have the instinct to actually do any damage to them. On the other hand, Clove was willing to admit that she'd been worried about facing the big guy from Eleven if things had come down to the two of them, and the girl from Twelve had showed a good edge with the bow and arrow during training. Glimmer had been an obvious threat simply because she was from One, but Clove would have to admit that Eleven's guy and Twelve's girl gave the impression that they would have been an interesting match-up if things had come down to her and either of them.

As it was… unless she'd lost count, the only non-Career in play right now was that guy from Ten, and she vaguely recalled that he'd had a limp or something that would stop him just charging in. Four's girl was nothing special, she was fairly sure the guy from Three had some kind of plan so she just needed to keep an eye on him, and despite his name, Marvel wasn't coming across as anything special so far. She didn't particularly _like_ the idea of fighting Cato after all the time they'd spent training together, but if it came down to the two of them…

Well, she'd do what she had to do to get back home.

* * *

**Gale**  
  
 _Katniss was dead._  
  
Every time Gale thought those words, he just wanted to hit something all over again. It was only his promise to Katniss that he'd take care of her family that stopped him trying to go out and attack the Peacekeepers with his bare hands if he couldn't get a weapon; _anything_ that would let him vent the rage he felt at the Capitol that had condemned Katniss to death for 'crimes' that had been committed decades ago.  
  
She had gone into a situation that she should never have been forced into because she wanted to protect her sister, and now she'd ended up dead in some stupid _cave-in_ with a bunch of randoms. Her death hadn't even given her a chance to make some kind of 'statement'; she hadn't taken anyone out, and she hadn't been able to show anyone what someone from Twelve could really do…  
  
He didn't know if he was angrier at Haymitch or Mellark; Mellark had just gone and basically stabbed Katniss in the back after all that talk about how he 'loved' her and then led that One girl right to her, and Haymitch had probably just kept on drinking rather than deal with any real business! The only good thing Mellark had done was die with the other five, and Gale still would have liked to kill him for what he'd done.  
  
He just wanted something he could _kill_ to vent over this whole situation; the Capitol had taken the most important thing in the world from him, and life went on as though this was just another day…  
  
 _God, I hate those assholes._

* * *

**Prim**  
  
 _Katniss was dead_.  
  
No matter how often Prim tried to take that fact in, it still prompted a fresh round of sobs from the little girl lying in her room, clutching her sister's pillow as Buttercup paced around the room.  
  
She understood why Katniss had volunteered for her, but that just made it worse; even as she grieved for her sister, she couldn't shake the feeling that she was still glad it wasn't _her_ who'd been in that arena…  
  
She was a horrible, selfish person who hadn't deserved a sister as caring as Katniss… and now her sister was _dead_ because she'd wanted to protect Prim… dead with four strangers and someone who'd tried to help them in a dark moment years ago…  
  
Why did the Games have to go on after something so stupidly pointless?

* * *

**Cinna**  
  
Cinna knew that it was an unfortunate attitude to take for any stylist, but he had genuinely liked Katniss Everdeen. He had requested District Twelve partially for the challenge of making something suitably distinctive for what many saw as the least impressive District, but he would admit to those he trusted that he had enjoyed the chance to work with Katniss. She had been honest in a manner that few Tributes were in his study of past Games, and he had appreciated her courage in volunteering for her sister from the beginning.  
  
He might have been involved in attempts to find a suitable symbol for the rebellion, but right now, he preferred to focus on the tragedy that a promising young woman had been lost in such a manner before she could truly show Panem's public what she was capable of. He appreciated Thirteen's official goals, but he liked to consider the human cost as well; what good was it to rebel without a clear idea what you were fighting for?  
  
He fought to give others a chance, and his only regret now was that he hadn't been able to give Katniss a better one…

* * *

**President Snow**  
  
Six tributes in one moment…  
  
They hadn't experienced loss on that scale since Beetee's little trick with an electric cable during the Fortieth Games, and on that occasion they'd at least had an interesting few days leading up to a suitably dramatic showdown.  
  
Still, Snow couldn't object to the result in principle. As he'd observed to Seneca Crane during their earlier talk, the Games worked as a means of providing hope to the masses to keep them in line, but an accident like this could serve to reinforce the idea that the Districts were always destined to remain in line like the animals they were.  
  
The Capitol was the only truly deserving victor in Panem; those who won the Games just got to share in the glory under the conditions he and others imposed upon them.  
  
As frustrating as it was not to know how the cave-in had been caused, Snow could live with his ignorance if it ensured that he didn't have to put up with potentially troublesome Tributes. As much as he had tried to deny the idea to Seneca Crane, Katniss Everdeen had shown herself to be a potential threat to the system; if someone from an outlying District could earn such a score in the final assessment…  
  
The remaining Tributes were all interesting, but none of them should particularly 'rock the boat'; the survivors from One, Four and Ten were nothing special, Three overestimated his understanding of the rules and his place in events, and the Twos were little more than the standard Career Tribute. As Doctor Gaul had observed so long ago, the important thing was to maintain control of the system; Katniss Everdeen had the potential to be significant, but now they were back to the stereotypical Tributes who didn't merit much attention.  
  
With the Games back to the standard symbol of Panem's power, he could turn his attention to the question of those rumours he'd been hearing about someone stealing gold in some of the Districts. The murders in themselves weren't too significant so far, but he couldn't allow it to develop further in case certain people began to join the dots and express their dissatisfaction with the Capitol's ability to maintain order…


	7. The First Day of Training: Take Two

"You need to follow the three rules to being a Power Ranger," Zordon explained as the six of us stood in front of the wall displaying his face once again. I wondered if the rest of the team felt just as solemn about this decision as I suddenly felt right now, but there was no time to ask that particular question when we were about to face a threat as big as Rita appeared to be. "You must never use your powers for personal gain. You must never escalate a fight, unless your enemy forces you to. And you must never reveal your identity, ever."

"OK," I nodded in solemn understanding.

"So there's no misunderstanding here, what defines 'personal gain' and 'escalating a fight' in this context?" Liv raised her hand.

"Deploying excess weapons against an opponent that you could handle with available tools, and using your powers for anything that goes beyond the mission to defend the Zeo Crystal from those who would abuse it," Zordon clarified.

"In other words, we can't just go all out against some guy the moment the fight starts?" Glimmer asked.

"OK, that's… something to keep in mind," I nodded, fighting down the brief disappointment I felt at the implications of that statement. Whether or not being a Ranger would be any use against the Capitol, regardless of how many times Gale had complained about the current system, I had no reason not to believe that Rita was the biggest threat right now.

"OK, that clears that up, but haven't we already broken the 'don't reveal the identity' bit considering that the kid's in the room?" Glimmer indicated where Rue was standing off to the side.

"That third rule predominately applies to less developed civilisations who require the services of a Ranger team before their people are ready to make contact with the wider universe," Zordon explained. "Even in that scenario, there are cases where non-Ranger natives have been made aware of the identities of the Ranger team, but only if they vow to keep the secret themselves."

"I will," Rue nodded earnestly up at Zordon. "I won't tell _anyone_ about all this, I promise!"

"…Very well," Zordon said, seemingly 'nodding' back at Rue in turn before his gaze fixed on us. "The finer details of these rules shall be discussed once you have properly assumed your Ranger identity, and do this, you need to morph. Have any of you morphed before?"

"…No idea what that is, so I'm going to say no," Thresh shook his head, the rest of us following his example.

"OK, OK, let's step into the footprints, please," Alpha said, indicating the circular panels we'd stood in when we initially 'activated' the spaceship when we arrived, each now displaying basic holographic humanoids in the colour of one of the Power Coins.

"Standing in this circle, as a team, you can easily connect to the Morphin' Grid," Zordon explained, as the five of us walked up to the circle matching our colour while Rue stood uncertainly alongside Alpha. "Do you feel it?"

"Yeah they do," Alpha said, with a tone in his voice that sounded like he would have been grinning if he had the face for it.

"Uh… we're not," Peeta shook his head as he looked apologetically at Zordon.

"You need to morph to get your armour," Zordon said solemnly.

"Armour?" Thresh looked at the face with a grin. "We get armour?"

"I think it's… well, it's what those holograms earlier were about," Liv said, indicating the golden cloud in the middle of the room. "If I was reading what I saw in… that right, each Ranger gets armour matching their respective power coins; obviously we can't see the full details of it yet, but… yeah, it looked pretty cool."

"So I'll be going around kicking butt in pink armour?" Glimmer grinned. "Sounds neat-"

"But we need to… morph to get it?" Liv cut her off as she looked curiously back at Zordon. "How does that work? Is it somewhere in this ship?"

"Your armour is already inside you," Zordon explained. "You bring it out by connecting to each other, and to the Morphing Grid."

"OK… and how do we do that?" I asked.

"Bury your minds and focus," Zordon said, as the light of the central cloud began to glow more intensely and Zordon's voice became deeper. "The Power Rangers are a legion of warriors, sworn to protect life. You must become those warriors."

As the central glow increased, I held out my arms and saw the other four doing the same. For a moment, the glowing cloud seemed to spin as we stood around it, pulsing with strange energies I wasn't sure anyone on Earth had a term for right now…

The glow abruptly faded and the atmosphere of the room returned to normal, leaving the five of us looking awkwardly around the room at each other.

"Did it work?" Liv looked uncertainly at herself.

"Alpha Five, why didn't they morph?" Zordon asked.

"Maybe because most of us have barely known each other more than a fortnight and we were training to fight _each other_ for most of that?" Glimmer pointed out.

"You were?" Alpha looked at the District One girl with what I could actually tell was an expression of surprise despite the lack of an actual face to show it. "Huh; that _could_ be a problem…"

"We don't have time for problems," Zordon cut in firmly. "If these teenagers cannot morph, they must train without armour."

"Without armour?" Alpha repeated, looking at the wall with a shocked tone to his voice. "Sir, that will be very painful-!"

"We have _no choice_ ," Zordon said, looking at Alpha firmly. "Take them down to the Pit."

Alpha lowered his head and let out a sound that I interpreted as a robotic sigh before he turned back to us. "Follow me; we're going to the Pit!"

"The Pit?" Peeta repeated anxiously. "What's the Pit?"

"Right here," Alpha said, briskly leading us out of the room and back down the stairs we'd entered the ship by, waving his arms around the underground cavern.

"This is 'the Pit'?" Glimmer said sceptically.

"It's nice, right?" Alpha smiled.

"Alpha Five," Zordon's voice boomed out from the ship, "begin the exercise."

"Sorry, guys," Alpha shrugged.

"What exercise?" Peeta asked, before a strange blue glow enveloped the field and glowing purple rocks began to move towards each other, culminating in a large figure appearing in the middle of the cavern. It was vaguely human in appearance, but it looked like nothing more than a collection of rocks that someone had piled on top of each other, as though an amateur artist had wanted to create some kind of statue but hadn't had any real idea how to put it together. There was a vague impression of a face in the middle of the creature's chest, and basic hands, but as far as I could tell this was just a lump of rock.

"What are we meant to do here?" Thresh asked, walking up towards the figure. "Do we just hit it or-?"

Thresh's question was interrupted when the figure suddenly raised one arm and hit him in the centre of the chest, throwing him back against the wall.

" _Thresh_!" Rue screamed in horror.

" _Hey_!" Peeta yelled, charging forward to slam his palm against the figure, only to stare in surprise when his 'slap' knocked the rock creature back a few feet towards one of the stone pillars in the pit.

" _Nice_ ," Liv nodded in approval at Peeta before she glanced at Alpha. "What is this thing; some kind of solid hologram?"

"That's right," Alpha nodded at the District Five resident. "For what it's worth, you're definitely living up to the blue; you grew up not knowing about any of this stuff and it's _really_ coming together for you!"

"…Thanks?" Liv shrugged, clearly uncertain how to respond to that particular compliment.

"Solid hologram?" Glimmer repeated in surprise. "That's possible?"

"Don't the Capitol have that kind of technology?" Peeta looked at her curiously.

"That's just a basic invisible barrier; we're talking about something that looks _this_ real- _whoa_!" Glimmer jumped back as a few more of the creatures appeared around us. A quick glance was enough to confirm that each creature was slightly different, the rocks in different patterns and put together in a slightly different way (I was fairly sure a couple of them had extra arms sticking out of their backs), but they were all flexing their arms in a manner that made it clear they were about to start a fight.

"What _is_ this?" Thresh looked around the room in shock as he rubbed anxiously at his chest while walking up to join the rest of us. "What are these things?"

"Simulations of Rita's Putty army," Alpha explained. "You'll need to get past them to get to her, which is where your armour comes in. Since we're having… trouble reaching that point, for the moment you'll have to focus on training to fight as a team to reinforce your own bond with each other."

"By fighting these things?" Glimmer indicated the nearest 'putty'. "How long's this going to-?"

"We can work out a specific timeframe once we've worked out what you're capable of," Alpha shrugged. "Let's see what works."

* * *

We spent the next couple of hours struggling against the holographic 'putties', with Peeta, Liv, Glimmer, Thresh and I each facing off against a particular hologram as best as we could while Rue watched from her position sitting on the steps leading up to the ship. It didn't take long to confirm that Glimmer was the best hand-to-hand fighter amongst us, but I was surprised to find that Peeta could do a fair job himself with some moves I recognised from our school wrestling matches. Thresh could deliver a powerful punch when he managed to land a good blow on our opponents, but whenever I saw him fighting even I could tell that he didn't have any real technique to back up what he was doing, and Liv just focused on evading the putties' punches until she could get a chance to land the occasional blow herself. For my part, I managed to land a few good hits myself, but I already knew that I wasn't going to win any fights on my own this way; I was so used to using my bow and arrow that something in me just shied away from the thought of getting up close to whatever I was trying to 'attack'.  
  
After a couple of hours of this 'training' had gone by, Alpha called it off and directed us all back inside the ship. I had a feeling even Liv wasn't sure how this design would actually work, but somehow the strange circles arrayed around the walls had rotated around to let us into different rooms. The latest rotation opened a path into a room that just consisted of a long table with a strange machine at the other end, but it was easily recognisable as some kind of dining area.  
  
"Huh," Liv looked around the room with a thoughtful smile.  
  
"What?" Glimmer looked back at the smaller girl. "It's just a dining room."  
  
"Made by an alien species that came here millions of years ago and predated our own existence in our current form by at least a few millennia?" Liv pointed out as she indicated the area. "Do you even realise how… _impossible_ that is? That at least two such different species have evolved to be so… _similar_?"  
  
"It's not that much of a stretch, actually," Alpha put in from where he was now standing near the strange machine at the other end. "The Zeo Crystal fragments give life to all planets, so it influences the evolution of life on those planets to follow a certain pattern… OK, here you go!"  
  
"What's this?" Rue looked in confusion at the strange bars that Alpha had placed on the table in front of each of us.  
  
"Nutrition bar," Alpha shrugged. "It's basic in terms of taste, but it has all the aminos, vitamins and minerals that your bodies require to sustain yourselves."  
  
"Ah," Peeta nodded in tentative understanding. He looked awkwardly at the bar in front of him for a moment before he cautiously raised it to his mouth and took a bite out of it. He chewed it thoughtfully for a while, until he swallowed and looked around the table. "Well… like he said, it doesn't taste great, but it's not _terrible_ either."  
  
"The computer may be able to work out something better-tasting later, but for the moment the priority was to get you something that you could eat," Alpha explained with a shrug. "I can work out something better once I've had a chance to calibrate the system for your species."  
  
"Mmm," Glimmer said, uncertainly chewing her own bar before she looked back at Alpha. "On the topic of keeping us alive, are there rooms anywhere in this place we could use?"  
  
"Rooms?"  
  
"To sleep in," Thresh spoke up as he finished his own bar. "Can't speak for everyone here, but I'd like somewhere to crash for the night."  
  
"Seconded," Glimmer raised her hand.  
  
"Wouldn't be against that either," Liv said.  
  
"I'll… I think I can sort something out for you," Alpha nodded, before he glanced over at Rue. "That said, since you're staying as well, I may have to put you with one of the others; this ship was designed based on the premise that only Power Rangers would be using it, and since you don't have a Coin you could just end up getting locked into your room…"  
  
"She can stay with me," Thresh nodded, receiving a grateful smile from the little girl.  
  
"OK, that helps," Alpha gave the two Eleven residents an understanding nod before he turned back to me. "I'll… show you to Zordon's old room-"  
  
"Hold on; I don't-!"  
  
"It's the way the ship's designed; each Ranger had their own private quarters synced to each coin, so you'll be taking your predecessor's rooms while you're staying here," Alpha explained. "For what it's worth, I cleared the rooms of their personal effects long ago; everything's in storage now, so there's nothing to worry about in that regard."  
  
"Uh… great?" Peeta nodded at Alpha as I followed the robot out of the dining area. We paused in the central area for a moment as the ship's interior rotated again, and then he led me into a red-rimmed circle that revealed a basic room with a bed, a desk, and a cubicle.  
  
"That's your… I believe the term is toiletry area?" Alpha explained as he noticed me looking at the cubicle. "You can clean up and dispose of your personal waste-"  
  
"Gotcha," I cut the robot off, before I looked at him with a firmer manner. "Look, Alpha, I get that Rita is a problem, and I accept that I'm meant to… to _lead_ these people, but… do you really think we can do this?"  
  
"…Can I be honest with you?"  
  
"Sure," I nodded.  
  
"I don't know," Alpha shook his head. "You're determined, but you're not really coming together as a _team_ right now…"  
  
"That's not exactly our _fault_ ," I countered. "You have to… I mean, none of us had _any_ idea there was even life on other planets a few days ago, and then I met over half of these people for the first time and had to spend the next week expecting at least half of them to try and kill me before this was all over!"  
  
"…Right," Alpha nodded tentatively at me, with what I would have considered a solemn manner if he'd had a face that could show me any kind of expression.  
  
"I _want_ to do this, Alpha- I don't want my sister to get killed when Rita destroys the world- but I just… I don't know if I _can_ bring these guys together," I said, unsure why I was bearing my soul to a robot but knowing that I had to tell this to somebody. "Glimmer's basically spent her life preparing to kill the rest of us, Peeta and I barely spoke back home, and I never even _knew_ Thresh, Rue and Liv before the Games started; how am I meant to do this?"  
  
"You're the Red Ranger, Katniss Everdeen," Alpha looked at me with surprising depth in his voice. "The coin wouldn't have chosen you if you _couldn't_ do it."  
  
I decided to just nod in silence at that statement as Alpha turned around and left the room, leaving me to sit on the bed and take the red coin out of my pocket.  
  
Like I'd told Alpha, I didn't want Rita to destroy the world, but could I really bring Peeta, Liv, Glimmer and Thresh together as a team in time to pull it off?  
  
 _Ten days of training to go and no way of knowing if we can pull it off…_


	8. Training Day Two: Hunt of the Red Ranger

When the next day of training started, I had no idea what I was going to do about the problem Alpha and I had discussed last night. I appreciated the point he'd made about how that we weren't working out as a team at the moment, but when I'd never worked as a leader in anything more than leading the school in songs when I was little, it was hard to work out how to get this group to work together when we'd spent years thinking that we'd just regard each other as enemies if we got to this point.

The strangest part was trying to basically invert my old pattern of behaviour from the training sessions before the Games. When we were in the training halls, I'd often had to remind myself that Peeta and I were going to end up opponents when the Games started and would have to hide our true strengths from each other, but now I was in a position where I was fighting alongside four other people with the final goal of working _together_ rather than fighting each other to the death. It was easy enough to work out how we could avoid basically hitting each other while we were training, particularly with the more obvious threat of the putties to focus on, but that was far from the same thing as working as an actual team in a fight.

The first couple of days of training were basically more of the same as we fell into a sort of 'routine', where we all tried to fight the putty holograms in the morning and afternoon, with a break for lunch and dinner after we tried and failed to morph all over again. Meals were particularly bland, as we only had the same protein bars to eat and some cups of water that I didn't want to think about the source of.

The fights with the putties were still painful, but as the struggle continued, it was easier to see how the others were improving in terms of combat ability. Thresh and Peeta still relied primarily on raw strength to take down their respective opponents, Thresh hitting the Putties he fought while Peeta tended to use wrestling moves to toss them around. Liv seemed to be taking some time actually trying to _fight_ the putties, as so far she was relying more on avoiding their attacks and striking back when she found a suitable opening. Glimmer was the most obviously technically skilled fighter among us, often weaving around her designated opponent, but she occasionally attempted some kind of odd attack that I couldn't entirely understand, such as jamming her fingers at a point on the putty's body. When I managed to ask Liv about it the night of the second evening, she speculated that Glimmer was trying to attack nerve endings or something like that in the dummy, relying on her old training on instinct even if she had to consciously recognise that it wouldn't work on these opponents.

I thought about criticising her for that particular detail, but when I still found myself trying to go for my bow during a fight rather than relying on the current hand-to-hand, I could tentatively recognise why Glimmer was falling back on her own training. I'd basically taught myself how to use the bow with some help from my father before his death, so it made sense that Glimmer would find it harder to ignore her years of training in this situation.

It didn't make it easier to acknowledge just how many problems we were trying to overcome to make this work, but at least I was getting a better sense of what we were working with.

As we ate the next day, it struck me that none of us had actually talked much about our current situation beyond the fact that we'd agreed to go through with the training, but as soon as the thought occurred to me I had no idea how to take that idea any further. Making an impression during my interview with Caesar had been hard enough when he actually _wanted_ to talk to me, but right now I wasn't sure if any of us were comfortable enough with the others to open up about anything. Thresh and Rue at least seemed to get along well enough, considering that she was staying in his room, but I still didn't know when Peeta had been telling the truth about his feelings where I was concerned, I wasn't sure what I could even talk to Liv about, and the more time we spent with Glimmer the clearer it was that none of us were even sure if we _could_ trust her.

It wasn't like any of us even understood that much about how these coins worked; just because we were apparently a good 'fit' for each of these 'power coins' didn't mean we were automatically going to work well _together_ …

Even as the other Rangers finished their food and left to return to the pit, I sat in silent contemplation, slowly chewing on my nutrition bar as I considered the problem. Even if I had my doubts about my ability to lead this team, I could appreciate that Zordon and Alpha weren't likely to accept the argument that they get someone else after the faith they had expressed in me, which meant that I had to work out _some_ way to make this work…

"This isn't going very well."

"What?" I looked over at Peeta, surprised to see him still sitting at the other end of the table on the opposite side from me. "We're getting the hang of-"

"Fighting on our own," Peeta interrupted me. "We're meant to be a _team_ , Katniss; how can we be part of a group if we're still not willing to trust each other?"

"We're not trying to _kill_ each other right now; I think we can call that a victory," I countered.

"But is it enough?"

I didn't answer Peeta's question as I finished my current food bar, aware that he had a good point but with no idea what I could say in return. Even if I discounted Rue from the 'equation' since she wasn't part of this 'Ranger' dynamic, the five of us needed something we could use to help us bond as a team beyond the fight training, but when we had so little else we could actually _do_ in this ship without giving away that we were still alive…

I smiled as I swallowed the last of my food bar and stood up, a new idea in mind.

"Tell the others I'm having some private training with Zordon," I looked apologetically at Peeta as I stood up.

"You're-?" Peeta began in confusion.

"Peeta," I shifted my expression to what I hoped was an authoritative glare as I looked at him, "if you ever had any real faith in me, have faith that I have a reason for doing this that _will_ help us if it pays off."

When Peeta finally nodded at me in acceptance, I could only hope that my impulsive idea would be enough to at least break the ice. I might not have any clear idea how I was going to bring this team together in time to actually fight Rita, but if this worked out, there might be something that I could change about our currently exasperating situation.

"Katniss?" Alpha looked at me in surprise as I walked into the room to see him and Zordon. "What is it?"

"I need to go out."

"Go out?" Zordon repeated, looking at me with a frown. "You are needed-"

"Look, I'm sure Alpha's told you that I understand that what we're doing here is important, and I'm sorry that we're having so much trouble 'morphing' or whatever the term is, but the fact is that we're not getting anywhere training like this," I stared resolutely at the face in the wall. "If we're going to improve… well, I don't know if this is going to _help_ , but I thought I could go out and get us some new food?"

"New food?" Alpha repeated curiously. "The machine-"

"I get that it's giving us what we need, but there's a difference between something that sustains us and something we actually _like_ ," I explained. "The nutrition bars are keeping us alive right now, but that's all you can really say about them. I was thinking that we might… well, we might be able to bond more if we had something _good_ to eat, rather than just the same old thing."

"It is… worth consideration," Zordon conceded. "You know how to get food?"

"I hunted a lot back home," I replied, surprised at how easy it was to admit that to two relative strangers. "I know what to look for; I just need to go somewhere outside of the immediate area to do it."

"I understand," Zordon said, before he turned his attention to Alpha (on a strange level, I had to be impressed at how that projection system could show a shift of attention when Zordon had such a relatively limited presence). "Is the outward teleportation system working?"

"It should be now that the coins are back," Alpha nodded. "I spent some time scanning the area to confirm that the coins hadn't moved, but obviously I ended up taking in a lot of the wider local terrain in the process-"

"Hold on; can you just explain what you're talking about here?" I looked urgently between the talking wall and the strange little machine. "What's this 'outward teleportation system' you mentioned?"

"Oh, it's an emergency feature of the coins; if you're facing mortal peril, so long as you've got the power to spare to activate it, they'll automatically take you all somewhere you consider safe so that you'll be protected from serious harm," Alpha explained.

"…Really?" I looked sceptically at the little robot. "I thought you said Zordon's team died-"

"Facing a threat from another Ranger who could hit them so hard that the coins couldn't spare the energy to activate the system, especially not when they were using power while morphed," Alpha clarified. "The point is, we can teleport you _out_ of the ship with relative ease so long as you choose an area you can be sure won't have anyone there who might see you arrive, and then all you need to do is trigger the coin by mental command and you can come back when you're ready."

"…Thanks," I said, deciding to just accept that I was getting what I had asked for. "I just need to grab a couple of things from our rooms-"

"Wait," Zordon's voice cut in. "If you intend to go outside without armour, you will require this."

I didn't have time to ask what he meant before I felt a layer of cloth settle around my head. Reaching up in surprise, I felt a strange hood and scarf, wrapped around my head and face so that only my eyes were visible, pulling the cloth just forward enough to confirm that it was made of a red material.

"The garb of the Ninjetti, the warriors who first harnessed the power of the Morphing Grid to become Power Rangers," Zordon explained as I looked back at the wall. "Until you can morph and properly harness your armour, if you intend to go out of the ship and use your powers, this will conceal your identity should you be discovered."

"…Thanks," I nodded, deciding to just accept the 'gift' in the spirit with which it was intended. "Once I get back, I can help you find a spot to drop me off…"

* * *

Walking through the forest an hour later, I could barely restrain the urge to laugh for joy. When I'd been so convinced that I'd never get the chance to do this a couple of weeks ago, it was frankly a relief to once again be doing something I knew how to do, out hunting in the forest for food for those I was close to.  
  
Admittedly, right now I was hunting for food in the hope that it would give me an opportunity to get close to other people, but the basic principle was still the same. I'd managed to grab the bow and arrows from Glimmer's room, but I'd also picked up a bag to collect some firewood in case the ship didn't offer any means of cooking actual food, and a couple of knives from various packs in case I got the chance to do some work on skinning my catch before bringing it in.  
  
Finding a few herbs and other plants that I could use as flavourings had been both the easy part and the hardest part of this particular excursion. Thanks to my father's training, I'd known where most of the good 'crops' were around District Twelve for years, whereas here I was starting from scratch and just had to hope that I had kept track of the conditions necessary to grow the relevant crops. I'd managed to find a few spices that could be used to add flavouring to anything I might bring back, but the challenge now lay in finding something that could give six people at least one decent meal. So far I'd spotted a few birds and rabbits, so I at least knew that I was in the right area to find game, but I was going to give myself another hour before I decided to just settle for whatever I could find out here. If I was going to work on bringing my team together, I was going to get us something good to eat-When I saw a deer off in the distance, I immediately froze, unsure if I should believe my good luck. It had been months since I'd seen a deer before that one I'd glimpsed on the day of my Reaping, and now, to see one here…  
  
Moving with a speed and precision that somehow managed to surprise even me, I had notched, aimed and fired my arrow almost on automatic. As soon as the deer fell, I ran over to examine it, relieved to find that I'd caught it directly in the heart. I retrieved the arrow and prepared to pick up its body when the forest fell silent…  
  
I suddenly knew what was about to happen.  
  
Looking up from my position over the deer, I froze as I saw a disturbingly familiar sight; a small group of people in tattered clothes, running through the forest, a Capitol hovercraft almost directly above them.  
  
It was just like that time I'd told Peeta about on our first day in the training centre; 'traitors' to the Capitol, destined to get caught and either be killed or made into Avoxes, and all I could do was-  
  
 _No_.  
  
I hadn't been able to do anything last time, but I wasn't going to let myself hesitate now.  
  
Maybe I wasn't able to morph yet, but I _was_ still a Ranger… and even if this wasn't the big threat of Rita, that hovercraft was still going to threaten innocent people if I didn't do something.  
  
I was moving so quickly I didn't even realise what I was doing as I tossed the dead deer into a bush, tossed my leather jacket over it (anything to make it less obvious that I'd been a Tribute) and scrambled up the nearest tree until I was near the top. I only vaguely registered the net launch from the hovercraft towards the fleeing group as I leapt from the tree and practically flew through the air until I hit the front windows feet-first. I didn't know if it was my enhanced strength or if this glass just wasn't that strong, but the whole screen shattered under my impact, my feet striking the pilot inside in the same motion. A couple of peacekeepers positioned inside the ship looked up in shock, but I just lashed out with my hands extended, trying to copy what Liv had identified as Glimmer's 'nerve strikes' at points on their shoulders.  
  
As the peacekeepers fell backwards, I spun around and grabbed the control stick for the hovercraft before I shifted the ship into a downward descent; I doubted that I would be able to fly this thing anywhere, but a quick crash might be enough for what I had in mind. With the course set, I grabbed the three crew- it was almost disturbingly easy to pick them up like this- and ran further into the hovercraft, soon finding an open hatch that linked to the cable leading down to the net. Not entirely thinking about how I was doing this, I grabbed the cable in my hands and yanked it apart with one move, subsequently taking hold of the end with the net on it as I jumped out of the falling hovercraft. Even as I fell, I yanked the cable in my hand so that the net at the other end hit a large bush or low tree of some sort before I reached the ground myself, tossing the three peacekeepers I'd grabbed off to the side before I ran for the net. Taking only a moment to confirm that my Ninjetti mask was still in place, I reached up and pulled the net apart, smiling in relief when I saw that the people inside, while clearly shaken, showed no sign of being seriously hurt by what had happened.  
  
"Go," I said, only just remembering to make my voice sound low; I hadn't spoken much when I was being filmed for the Games, but I didn't want to risk anyone recognising my voice if I could do something to avoid that. "And keep running."  
  
I didn't know where they thought they could go from here, but the important thing was that the Capitol wouldn't have the chance to make them Avoxes. The group nodded uncertainly at me before they turned around and ran back into the forest, one of them looking uncertainly at me for a moment before he continued after the others.  
  
Turning my attention back to the Peacekeepers, I was relieved to find that they all still seemed to be breathing and showed no sign of any serious injuries. Whatever they might have done, I wasn't ready to start killing people even if I was meant to keep this 'Ranger' thing secret. What mattered was that they wouldn't be getting up for the next few minutes, which would give _me_ enough time to get the deer and teleport back to the ship without anyone here realising where I had gone.  
  
Still… for the first time, I could kind of understand where Gale was coming from when he went off on his anti-Capitol rants; it felt _good_ to save someone from the kind of punishments they could inflict…


	9. Rangers at Dinner

"Where were you?" Glimmer shot a pointed glare at me when the rest of the former Tributes walked into the ship, the now-former Career looking particularly bitter when she saw me waiting against the door leading to the dining area. "I thought the whole point of you having the red coin was that you were in _charge_ of this little group we've got going on here?"

"I am," I nodded in acknowledgement, hoping that my planned 'joke' would go down well. "Which is why I decided that it was time to do something that every good authority figure should do and get you all something to eat."

"Something to eat?" Liv repeated curiously.

"Like what?" Thresh raised a pointed eyebrow. "A fancier protein bar?"

In response, I tapped my foot against the door, which opened to reveal Alpha standing at the other end of the table a smoking plate of meat in front of him with dishes and tools that were apparently some kind of cutlery arrayed along the table waiting for us to sit at them.

"I believe the term is 'ta-da'?" the robot said politely, spreading his arms to indicate the table before him.

"What is _that_?" Glimmer looked at the large plate of meat in surprise.

"Part of a deer I hunted down earlier," I explained, enjoying the chance to truly feel in control for a change as the other Rangers walked into the room.

"You got out?" Liv looked sharply at me.

"Turns out these coins can… teleport, right?" I looked at Alpha.

"It's part of an emergency protocol," Alpha explained. "The coins can teleport you to safety- in this case, they'd teleport you back to the ship- or we can configure it to send you _out_ of the ship so long as you can guarantee a location where you won't be seen when you arrive."

"You're saying we can just leave this ship-?" Glimmer began.

"We can't exactly _stay_ out there," Liv shifted her sharp glare from me to Glimmer. "Or are you forgetting that little issue where Rita's going to attack in a week or so if we aren't ready to fight her?"

"Exactly," Alpha nodded. "I recognise that you're all concerned about your families, and I apologise for my mistake in convincing the outside world that you're dead, but it's not safe for any of you to leave the ship full-time right now."

"But you let her-!"

"Because I had a good idea where to go and was prepared for the possibility that I'd be seen," I defended myself. "Like Alpha said, we can't just… nip out and visit our families when we've still got Rita to worry about; we have to focus on getting ready."

"She's right," Peeta nodded in agreement. "Trying to tell other people what's going on here just puts them at risk at best, but just going out to get food somewhere safe…"

"For what it's worth, I have to agree with One that being stuck here like this sucks, but on the other hand, Yellow makes a fair point," Thresh nodded, as he took a bite of the meat and then smiled at me in approval. "Hey, this is pretty good."

"I managed to find a few herbs and seasonings while I was out hunting," I explained, smiling as I took a bite of the meat myself. "I'm not an expert cook, but I know enough to put something good together."

"You can do that?" Rue looked curiously at me.

"I can confirm that she's very good at hunting," Peeta spoke up, giving me a brief smile. "Back home my father buys her squirrels; she always manages to hit them in the eye."

"Always?" Liv looked at me with new respect. "That can't be easy."

"I manage," I said with a cautious smile.

"And… is this everything?" Glimmer asked, even as she cautiously sat down at the other end of the table. "From what you got today, I mean?"

"No, just what I prepared for this evening with Alpha's help," I explained. "He showed me a kind of storage area in another part of the ship that we can use to keep the rest of it in good condition for the next few days; it's some kind of… high-tech fridge, I think?"

"You think?" Glimmer looked at me in surprise, pausing in the middle of cutting her steak.

"Well, it's not like I've seen what they look like back home," I countered defensively. "I live in the Seam; we don't have the means to power something like that."

"…It's that bad out there?" Glimmer asked, the normally confident-looking Career girl looking surprisingly vulnerable as she looked at me.

"You ever even bothered to _ask_ what it's like in the outer Districts, One?" Thresh looked at Glimmer with a new edge of bitterness. "Believe me, I can buy that Red doesn't have her own fridge."

Glimmer just stared back at him in silence for a few moments, before she turned her attention back to the food. She gave me a brief smile of approval as she took her first bite, but it was soon clear that neither of us knew what to say after that particular topic, so it was easier to just say nothing.

"So… When did you start hunting?" Rue looked innocently at me after the silence became too awkward.

"…Maybe when I was around your age," I said, after looking thoughtfully around the table. Under normal circumstances I wouldn't have shared this information with a group of relative strangers, but considering that we would already be keeping our Ranger status secret from everyone else once we got out of here, adding a few more secrets couldn't hurt. "My dad died in a mining accident, and my mother… well, she didn't handle it well."

"Been there," Thresh said.

"You have?" Liv looked at him curiously.

"Just in the 'losing parents' sense," Thresh elaborated, suddenly looking awkwardly down at his plate. "My own parents… Mom died giving birth to Fray, and then Dad pretty much worked himself to death to keep her alive."

"Your sister?" Rue looked at Thresh with a sympathetic expression.

"She's still with Grandma back home," Thresh said, his awkward expression becoming grim. "Gran's great, but… y'know how it is; it's not the same."

"Right…" I nodded at him in understanding, suddenly wondering if Fray and Prim would get along and then trying not to think about the idea that they both thought their siblings were dead right now. I was already uncertain about this particular attempt to bond with the other Rangers, but I knew that I still had to give it a shot, even if I wasn't going to try and pressure them about anything they clearly didn't want to talk about. "How about the rest of you? I mean, I know about Peeta's family, but everyone else?"

"Maybe clear it up for the rest of us?" Glimmer asked as she looked at Peeta in a pointed manner.

"…Two brothers, one older, one younger, and my parents have a… strained relationship," Peeta said, looking down at his plate as he cut at his piece of meat.

"Strained?" Rue asked.

"His mother is… well, Gale and I have called her a witch," I said with a slight smile.

"Gale?" Glimmer repeated with a teasingly raised eyebrow. "Someone we should know?"

"Just a friend," I said briskly; even without Peeta as part of the current situation, bringing up Gale would invite all kinds of questions I wasn't ready to face.

"Just a-?"

"So how about you?" Peeta cut in as he looked over at Rue in a louder-than-normal voice that even I could tell was him trying to distract the rest from Glimmer's question. "What's your family like?"

"Uh… me, my parents, three sisters, and two brothers," Rue said, recognising the need to divert our current conversation. "I'm the oldest; I help out in the fields by climbing the orchard trees to get some of the harder-to-reach fruits-"

"You _work_?" Glimmer looked at Rue in surprise.

"We all do once we're old enough," Rue replied with a simple nonchalance. "It's the best way to keep up with the Capitol's demands."

Glimmer simply stared silently back at Rue at that statement, an expression on her face that I couldn't compare to anything I'd seen from the blonde Career before.

"So, Liv-" Peeta began, clearly trying to break the silence, only for the Blue Ranger to pick up her plate of meat and walk out of the dining area. Looking at her back, I could see a sense of tension in her shoulders that I wasn't used to seeing from the normally-friendly former resident of District Five, but she had soon vanished from the room before I could try and think of a way to talk to her.

"So eating alone's an option?" Glimmer asked, picking up the last of her own meat and walking out of the room. "That's me then."

For a moment Thresh and Rue looked uncertainly at Peeta and I, but then Thresh picked up his own plate and walked off, leaving Rue to look apologetically at me before she followed her District partner out of the dining area.

"…Do I put people off?" I looked uncertainly at Peeta, even as I recognised how fundamentally stupid it was to ask him this question.

"Huh?" Peeta looked at me in surprise.

"I mean, I asked everyone to face some really personal stuff, and all I did in turn was give them food; was that… did I push them too far?"

"I think… we're in a really weird situation right now, and you're trying to do something you're not used to doing," Peeta said, smiling at me in a tentative yet reassuring manner. "We all got into this thinking that only one of us was _definitely_ going to come home, and adjusting to the idea that we all have a chance of living through this…"

"Even with Rita?"

"Even with Rita," Peeta nodded. "Maybe she killed… our predecessors… but that time she maybe had the advantage that she caught them by surprise; we're going into this _knowing_ that we're up against her…"

"It's not much."

"It's the best we've got right now."

As Peeta and I sat in silence and finished our food, I briefly thought about mentioning my confrontation with the Capitol hovercraft, but decided that it would sound too much like I was trying to make some kind of point that even I didn't fully understand right now.

I appreciated that Rita had to be our priority, and I wasn't entirely sure about the implications of what that one act of defiance might mean for the future if the pilots talked about it once they got home… but if the Rangers were meant to protect life, maybe there could be a way to argue that there was more we could do in this kind of situation?

Maybe we didn't _have_ to focus exclusively on Rita and defending the Zeo Crystal…


End file.
